IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2412.15472.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Fairness of Additive Welfarist Rules

Author

Listed:
  • Karen Frilya Celine
  • Warut Suksompong
  • Sheung Man Yuen

Abstract

Allocating indivisible goods is a ubiquitous task in fair division. We study additive welfarist rules, an important class of rules which choose an allocation that maximizes the sum of some function of the agents' utilities. Prior work has shown that the maximum Nash welfare (MNW) rule is the unique additive welfarist rule that guarantees envy-freeness up to one good (EF1). We strengthen this result by showing that MNW remains the only additive welfarist rule that ensures EF1 for identical-good instances, two-value instances, as well as normalized instances with three or more agents. On the other hand, if the agents' utilities are integers, we demonstrate that several other rules offer the EF1 guarantee, and provide characterizations of these rules for various classes of instances.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Frilya Celine & Warut Suksompong & Sheung Man Yuen, 2024. "On the Fairness of Additive Welfarist Rules," Papers 2412.15472, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2412.15472
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.15472
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Suksompong, Warut, 2023. "A characterization of maximum Nash welfare for indivisible goods," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    2. Eric Budish, 2011. "The Combinatorial Assignment Problem: Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(6), pages 1061-1103.
    3. Sheung Man Yuen & Warut Suksompong, 2023. "Extending the Characterization of Maximum Nash Welfare," Papers 2301.03798, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2023.
    4. Yuen, Sheung Man & Suksompong, Warut, 2023. "Extending the characterization of maximum Nash welfare," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Suksompong, Warut & Teh, Nicholas, 2023. "Weighted fair division with matroid-rank valuations: Monotonicity and strategyproofness," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 48-59.
    2. D. Marc Kilgour & Rudolf Vetschera, 2024. "Two-Person Fair Division with Additive Valuations," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 745-774, August.
    3. Warut Suksompong & Nicholas Teh, 2023. "Weighted Fair Division with Matroid-Rank Valuations: Monotonicity and Strategyproofness," Papers 2303.14454, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2023.
    4. Felix Brandt & Matthias Greger & Erel Segal-Halevi & Warut Suksompong, 2023. "Coordinating Charitable Donations," Papers 2305.10286, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2024.
    5. Yuen, Sheung Man & Suksompong, Warut, 2023. "Extending the characterization of maximum Nash welfare," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    6. Erlanson, Albin & Szwagrzak, Karol, 2013. "Strategy-Proof Package Assignment," Working Papers 2013:43, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    7. Scott Duke Kominers & Alexander Teytelboym & Vincent P Crawford, 2017. "An invitation to market design," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(4), pages 541-571.
    8. Aygün, Orhan & Turhan, Bertan, 2021. "How to De-reserve Reserves," ISU General Staff Papers 202103100800001123, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    9. Parag A. Pathak & Alex Rees-Jones & Tayfun Sönmez, 2020. "Immigration Lottery Design: Engineered and Coincidental Consequences of H-1B Reforms," NBER Working Papers 26767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Sheung Man Yuen & Warut Suksompong, 2023. "Extending the Characterization of Maximum Nash Welfare," Papers 2301.03798, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2023.
    11. Ehlers, Lars & Hafalir, Isa E. & Yenmez, M. Bumin & Yildirim, Muhammed A., 2014. "School choice with controlled choice constraints: Hard bounds versus soft bounds," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 648-683.
    12. Julien Combe & Vladyslav Nora & Olivier Tercieux, 2021. "Dynamic assignment without money: Optimality of spot mechanisms," Working Papers 2021-11, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    13. Luofeng Liao & Christian Kroer, 2024. "Statistical Inference and A/B Testing in Fisher Markets and Paced Auctions," Papers 2406.15522, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    14. Miralles, Antonio & Pycia, Marek, 2021. "Foundations of pseudomarkets: Walrasian equilibria for discrete resources," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    15. Eric Budish & Gérard P. Cachon & Judd B. Kessler & Abraham Othman, 2017. "Course Match: A Large-Scale Implementation of Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes for Combinatorial Allocation," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 314-336, April.
    16. Parag A. Pathak & Tayfun Sönmez & M. Utku Ünver & M. Bumin Yenmez, 2024. "Fair Allocation of Vaccines, Ventilators and Antiviral Treatments: Leaving No Ethical Value Behind in Healthcare Rationing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(6), pages 3999-4036, June.
    17. Anna Bogomolnaia & Hervé Moulin, 2023. "Guarantees in Fair Division: General or Monotone Preferences," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(1), pages 160-176, February.
    18. Dur, Umut Mert & Wiseman, Thomas, 2019. "School choice with neighbors," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 101-109.
    19. Romero-Medina, Antonio & Triossi, Matteo, 2024. "Strategic priority-based course allocation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    20. Eun Jeong Heo & Vikram Manjunath, 2017. "Implementation in stochastic dominance Nash equilibria," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 48(1), pages 5-30, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2412.15472. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.